Many corporations have their own internal corporate telephone network with their own dialing plan. The use of the corporate telephone network is essential for the day-to-day work of the corporations' employees. Because of the trend toward employees working offsite, either at home or on the road to customers, a need has developed for these employees to have access to the corporate network from their offsite location. Two conventional approaches have attempted to address this need.
One conventional approach installs a special dedicated telephone line from a fixed location, such as the employee's house, through the public telephone network to the corporate network. There are several problems with such an approach: (1) the high cost of running dedicated telephone lines for each employee working outside the corporate network; (2) the long period of time required to set up the dedicated telephone lines; and (3) the inflexibility of the dedicated telephone lines since they are installed to run to fixed locations.
Another conventional approach requires the employee to use a special calling card. This approach also has several problems: (1) inconvenience due to the long series of digits that normally must be entered to complete a telephone call; (2) expense due to carrier charges incurred for each telephone call; and (3) lack of security because the calling card can be used by anyone, including unauthorized individuals.
An additional problem with both conventional approaches is that the caller's calling identification (ID) is not displayed to the person being called. Corporate networks frequently include special telephones installed to display the caller's calling ID, but these telephones are not presented with the caller's calling ID with either of the above approaches, and recognize the call as merely from an external party.
Therefore, a need exists for providing authorized callers, including employees, external to the corporate network use of the corporate dialing plan in placing telephone calls in a manner that is secure, cost efficient, and easy to use.